]]>http://overlawyered.com/2014/09/september-26-roundup/feed/0Talking Toyota and the fedshttp://overlawyered.com/2014/04/toyota-notes/
http://overlawyered.com/2014/04/toyota-notes/#commentsWed, 02 Apr 2014 10:24:20 +0000http://overlawyered.com/?p=44761Popular radio host Mike Rosen had me on his program last week to talk about the Justice Department’s aggressive use of criminal law against the Japanese automaker (earlier here). Also check out Canadian columnist Terence Corcoran’s view: “Intended media acceleration and the assault on Toyota” [Financial Post] Tags: on TV and radio, sudden acceleration, Toyota

Popular radio host Mike Rosen had me on his program last week to talk about the Justice Department’s aggressive use of criminal law against the Japanese automaker (earlier here). Also check out Canadian columnist Terence Corcoran’s view: “Intended media acceleration and the assault on Toyota” [Financial Post]

]]>http://overlawyered.com/2014/04/toyota-notes/feed/0Welcome Wall Street Journal readershttp://overlawyered.com/2014/03/department-justice-extracts-1-2-billion-toyota/
http://overlawyered.com/2014/03/department-justice-extracts-1-2-billion-toyota/#commentsMon, 24 Mar 2014 04:15:12 +0000http://overlawyered.com/?p=44695Last week the Department of Justice announced a deal with Toyota in which the Japanese automaker would fork over $1.2 billion and place itself under supervision for allegedly not being forthcoming enough with information at the height of the 2009-2010 panic over claims of unintended acceleration in its cars. The acceleration claims themselves had turned […]

]]>Last week the Department of Justice announced a deal with Toyota in which the Japanese automaker would fork over $1.2 billion and place itself under supervision for allegedly not being forthcoming enough with information at the height of the 2009-2010 panic over claims of unintended acceleration in its cars. The acceleration claims themselves had turned out to be almost entirely bogus, and were refuted in a report from the federal government’s own expert agency, NHTSA. Instead, the prosecution relied on a single count of wire fraud: Toyota had supposedly given regulators, Congress and the public an erroneously positive view of its safety efforts. It should therefore have to “forfeit” a huge sum supposedly related to the volume of business it did over a relevant period.

I’ve got an opinion piece in Monday’s Wall Street Journal (unpaywalled Cato version here, related Cato post here) about this whole appalling affair, which should frighten other businesses that might face draconian charges in future not just for compliance infractions, but more broadly for defending their products in the court of public opinion. Meanwhile, the Justice Department’s grandstanding and demagogic press release goes to some lengths to leave the impression “that unintended acceleration is some mysterious phenomenon of auto design unrelated to flooring the accelerator.” Someone here is irresponsibly misleading the motoring public and withholding vital safety information, but it’s not Toyota.

]]>http://overlawyered.com/2014/03/department-justice-extracts-1-2-billion-toyota/feed/10Holman Jenkins: Will Tort Law Kill Driverless Cars?http://overlawyered.com/2013/12/holman-jenkins-will-tort-law-kill-driverless-cars/
http://overlawyered.com/2013/12/holman-jenkins-will-tort-law-kill-driverless-cars/#commentsThu, 19 Dec 2013 12:16:53 +0000http://overlawyered.com/?p=43101It’s behind a paywall, but the WSJ columnist looks into a question touched on repeatedly in this space and connects it to the unpredictability with which juries may credit expert testimony, as an Oklahoma jury recently did in Toyota litigation: Toyota had been vigorously fighting hundreds of complaints that its cars are prone to unintended […]

Toyota had been vigorously fighting hundreds of complaints that its cars are prone to unintended acceleration. Now it’s moving toward a global settlement as a consequence of a single Oklahoma lawsuit that appears to establish that Toyota can’t prevail if it can’t prove a negative—that its software didn’t go haywire in some untraceable and unreplicable manner. …

The Bookout jury was apparently impressed by the testimony of software expert Michael Barr. He said a single “bit flip” (the smallest instance of data corruption) could cause uncontrolled acceleration when the driver had been using cruise control, stopped using cruise control, then resumed using cruise control to let the car accelerate back to its selected speed. …

The connection to Ms. Bookout’s crash, which didn’t involve cruise control and took place on an exit ramp? None, except Mr. Barr claimed that “software failure is consistent with the description of the [Bookout] accident” and “more likely than not” a factor.

Jenkins notes, as have others, that if some mysterious and unreplicable bug is causing Toyotas to accelerate suddenly while disabling the brakes, it seems to differentially appear in cars being driven by elderly drivers, which are greatly overrepresented in the crash statistics.

More: Kyle Graham on whether vaccine liability limits make a plausible precedent for limits on liability for driverless cars.

]]>http://overlawyered.com/2013/12/holman-jenkins-will-tort-law-kill-driverless-cars/feed/8Oklahoma jury: Toyotas do have electronic gremlinshttp://overlawyered.com/2013/10/oklahoma-jury-electronic-gremlins-toyotas/
http://overlawyered.com/2013/10/oklahoma-jury-electronic-gremlins-toyotas/#commentsTue, 29 Oct 2013 13:31:24 +0000http://overlawyered.com/?p=42195Lawyers have taken unintended-acceleration cases to trial on a variety of theories, including pedal placement and lack of brake override, but have not had much success in arguing that electronic gremlins inhabit the vehicle and that the driver was correctly pressing the brake. Has their luck changed with an Oklahoma jury’s new verdict? The Japanese […]

]]>Lawyers have taken unintended-acceleration cases to trial on a variety of theories, including pedal placement and lack of brake override, but have not had much success in arguing that electronic gremlins inhabit the vehicle and that the driver was correctly pressing the brake. Has their luck changed with an Oklahoma jury’s new verdict? The Japanese automaker doesn’t seem to want to take chances, and promptly settled the case, represented on the plaintiff’s side by Montgomery, Ala.’s Beasley Allen. [National Law Journal, The Truth About Cars; Peter Huber on the Audi scare a quarter-century ago] Commenter at TTAC: “I’d like to see this happen with a jury of engineers.” More: Mass Tort Prof.
Tags: Oklahoma, sudden acceleration, Toyota

]]>“A jury cleared Toyota Motor Corp. of liability Thursday in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of a Southern California woman killed in a 2009 crash that occurred amid widespread reports of unintended acceleration involving Toyota vehicles.” Despite regular hints in places like the Los Angeles Times that undetected electronic defects might be to blame for sudden acceleration, lawyers for Uno’s family went to trial on the more prosaic theory that Toyota was wrong not to have included a brake override system in the car as an added help to drivers who might be unable to correct a depressed gas pedal. A jury disagreed. [AP/NBC Los Angeles; L.A. Times]
Tags: sudden acceleration, Toyota

]]>http://overlawyered.com/2013/10/jury-clears-toyota-uno-case/feed/9Imagine what a genuine malfunction might have costhttp://overlawyered.com/2013/07/imagine-genuine-malfunction-might-cost/
http://overlawyered.com/2013/07/imagine-genuine-malfunction-might-cost/#commentsFri, 26 Jul 2013 13:18:44 +0000http://overlawyered.com/?p=40221The bogus Toyota sudden-acceleration scandal, fed by credulous media and hungry lawyers, has now cost the Japanese automaker upwards of one billion dollars on paper in settlements, despite the lack of an actual mechanical basis for the claims. (The “on paper” is a necessary qualifier because class action settlements typically fall short of transferring the […]

]]>The bogus Toyota sudden-acceleration scandal, fed by credulous media and hungry lawyers, has now cost the Japanese automaker upwards of one billion dollars on paper in settlements, despite the lack of an actual mechanical basis for the claims. (The “on paper” is a necessary qualifier because class action settlements typically fall short of transferring the actual sums declared) Yet many more lawsuits remain unsettled, including one nearing trial alleging that the automaker was negligent in not installing a system that cuts off accelerator power when the brake pedal is depressed. Whatever their value as a gesture of reassurance, such systems are of no help whatsoever in the actual sudden-acceleration accidents that typically make it to court, in which drivers mistakenly believe themselves to be pressing the brake when their foot is actually on the accelerator. [L.A. Times, whose coverage as usual disappoints]

“The heart of the mass tort was always the electronic throttle control. The fact that the first trial is going and not bringing that theory is interesting,” said Byron Stier, a professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles who specializes in mass tort litigation. “Look how far that is from the original panic of this.”